Social media is rife with skin-whitening products. But little is being done to regulate the market

[reader]

From CNN

Once primarily sold in markets and beauty stores, skin-lightening products have exploded in their availability online and today, they are pervasive on every major social media platform. 

On Facebook and Instagram, vendors hawk creams and serums that promise lighter skin yet offer scant information about the products themselves, while on YouTube and TikTok you can find thousands of tutorials by people promoting potent products or home remedies without qualifications that support their claims. On TikTok alone, the hashtag #skinwhitening has over 254 million views, while #skinlightening has another 62 million. 

"Social media has become the most powerful tool right now for the sale of skin-lightening products," says Dr. Anita Benson, Nigeria-based dermatologist and founder of the Embrace Melanin Initiative to combat colorism and harmful skin-lightening practices in Africa. 

Over the years, Benson has treated many people experiencing skin issues following the use and misuse of skin-whitening products, including many women who have purchased them on social media. She is concerned that social media platforms are helping people perpetuate colorist ideals -- the belief that lighter skin is associated with beauty, success and often also wealth -- and that they are now also providing a marketplace for the products to act on these ideals. 

Previous research on other forms of media show a strong influence on colorism, explained Amanda Raffoul, a postdoctoral researcher at Harvard's public health incubator STRIPED, who is studying the way these products are promoted on TikTok. "But there's little known about how (skin-lightening) products are promoted across social media platforms," she told CNN.

Though the broader impact remains to be seen, experts like Benson are alarmed by what they are currently witnessing firsthand. She points to last year's #glowupchallenge -- a hashtag with over 4 billion views on TikTok -- as an example in which users compared before-and-after images of themselves. Many posts that Benson saw showed people becoming lighter skinned and she believes such appearance-based viral challenges have made bleaching (whitening) products "more popular and more acceptable." 

Influencing power

Also making the practice, and products, more acceptable are social media influencers, many of whom are paid to advertise skin-lightening cosmetics, pills and injections -- though some may be pressured into doing so, as BuzzFeed News reported in 2020. 

For example, one of the leading live streamers on Chinese social media platform Douyin, Li Jiaqi, has promoted skin lightening to his 44.8 million followers, while another popular streamer, Luo Wangyu, has advised his 19.4 million followers that "to achieve whiter skin, you need to both whiten your skin and get rid of the yellow." 

Nigerian influencer Okuneye Idris Olanrewaju, known as Bobrisky, promotes an aspirational lifestyle using Lagos-based skin lightening brands to her 4.5 million Instagram followers and 1 million followers on Snapchat.  

Back in 2018, American reality star Blac Chyna, who has over 16 million followers on Instagram, faced backlash when she announced that she was partnering with the brand Whitenicious on a brightening cream. Although that post was deleted, the celebrity has maintained a partnership with the company and the Whitenicious x Blac Chyna collection continues to sell a range of "brightening" products while the company more broadly promotes skin lightening on its Instagram account.

Many products advertised as skin whiteners and lighteners contain mercury, hydroquinone or corticosteroids, which are potentially toxic and can impact a person's health. A quick search on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube turns up a number of posts, and sometimes entire business pages, selling or promoting the use of products that have been flagged by researchers at Minnesota's Health Department in the US or by the Zero Mercury Working Groupas containing high levels of mercury. 

Mercury can have multiple negative health consequences, including neurological and cardiovascular damage.
 

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[vinapu]

 when walking to hotel i usually ask my guys if they want something from 7/11, one of guys picked up some whitening garbage. I paid for it but in the room gave him short lecture saying that we farangs pay to get skin brown why Thais do the same to get it white and told him that I doubt that using it is so healthy. Nor sure message sunk in but fact is , he did not put it on and returned tube to his bag